Is our children learning what our priorities are?

For someone who made such an effort to turn himself from an Ivy League Connecticut patrician to just a good ol' boy, President Bush sure isn't doing good work for the mass of regular folks to which he claims to belong:

Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration rejected a Democratic plan to cut interest rates on federally backed student loans, saying it instead preferred that Congress concentrate on funding direct-aid programs.

Oh horray! Just when I collect on what the federales have fronted me, I find that I'm going to be paying a higher interest than Argentina. Unlike them,I didn't even default on billions of dollars worth of debt just a half-decade ago.

But wait, here's an excuse:

``Student debt loads have soared in recent years, and it is not clear that encouraging more loans is a wise course,'' the White House's Office of Management and Budget said in a written statement.

If interest keeps piling up on your debt, it's harder to pay it off. Therefore, the higher the interest rate, the higher the debt load, individually and across the population.

But wait, here's a misleading alternative solution:

The administration instead favors increasing grant aid to low-income students, the OMB said.

Well, that sure sounds super-duper. I wonder how far down in this article I'll have to read before I find out what the problem is. Oh, here it is:

Bush and the Republican-led Congress had six years to increase Pell Grants, the main federal grant program for low- income students, if they wanted to do it, said Timmons, whose group represents about 1,800 colleges and educational organizations.

The only increase in the program during that period, however, was due to gains in the number of participating students, Timmons said.

You see, they can't lower interest rates because they would rather increase grants instead. But when given the chance, they didn't increase the grants. Presumably, they were waiting for a decrease in the interest rate.

Which they couldn't do because they wanted more grants.

Which they couldn't do because they were waiting on that danged interest rate.

Which they weren't going to touch because they wanted to increase the grants, which.....

Cleanup in Aisle 7...